Description
An issue was discovered in Xen through 4.14.x. A guest may access xenstore paths via absolute paths containing a full pathname, or via a relative path, which implicitly includes /local/domain/$DOMID for their own domain id. Management tools must access paths in guests' namespaces, necessarily using absolute paths. oxenstored imposes a pathname limit that is applied solely to the relative or absolute path specified by the client. Therefore, a guest can create paths in its own namespace which are too long for management tools to access. Depending on the toolstack in use, a malicious guest administrator might cause some management tools and debugging operations to fail. For example, a guest administrator can cause "xenstore-ls -r" to fail. However, a guest administrator cannot prevent the host administrator from tearing down the domain. All systems using oxenstored are vulnerable. Building and using oxenstored is the default in the upstream Xen distribution, if the Ocaml compiler is available. Systems using C xenstored are not vulnerable.
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | xen | 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1 | — |
| Debian 13 | xen | 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1 | — |
| Debian 12 | xen | 4.14.0+88-g1d1d1f5391-1 | — |
| Debian 10 | xen | 4.11.4+57-g41a822c392-2 | DSA-4812-1 |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | xen | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | xen | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 16.04 LTS | xen | No fix yet | — |
Alpine
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine v3.24 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.23 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.22 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.21 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.20 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
Show 9 more (older releases, extended support, other products)Fewer releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine v3.19 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.18 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.17 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.16 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.15 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.14 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.13 | xen | 4.14.1-r0 | — |
| Alpine v3.12 | xen | 4.13.2-r3 | — |
| Alpine v3.11 | xen | 4.13.2-r3 | — |
Advisories 1
- DSA-4812-1 xen - security update Debian Security (DSA / DLA) · Mar 9, 2026
References
- https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-323.html
- DSA-4812 vendor-advisory
- FEDORA-2020-64859a826b vendor-advisory
- FEDORA-2020-df772b417b vendor-advisory